BACKGROUND PAPER FOR THE

WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2013

Perceptions of Good Jobs

Analytical Report
Risaralda, Colombia

Ingunn Bjørkhaug

Anne Hatløy

Tewodros Kebede

Huafeng Zhang
 Fafo-report 2012:21
ISBN: 978-82-7422-882-5

The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the
authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Development Report 2013
team, the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the
World Bank or the governments they represent.
Table of Contents
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ 2
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... 2
Abbreviations and Acronyms ....................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 4
Chapter 2 Methods ........................................................................................................................... 6
2.1 Good jobs survey ............................................................................................................... 6
2.2 Questionnaire ..................................................................................................................... 6
2.3 Empirical methods ............................................................................................................. 7
Chapter 3 Data .................................................................................................................................. 9
3.1 Demographic and dwelling characteristics ........................................................................ 9
3.2 Economic situations ......................................................................................................... 10
3.3 Labor force participation ................................................................................................. 12
3.4 Characteristics of randomly selected individuals ............................................................ 12
Chapter 4 Results ........................................................................................................................... 15
4.1 Determinants of labor force participation ........................................................................ 15
4.2 Jobs and household wealth ............................................................................................... 17
4.3 Perception about job types ............................................................................................... 18
4.4 Job benefits for wage workers ......................................................................................... 23
4.5 Job satisfaction ................................................................................................................ 26
4.6 Jobs and empowerment ................................................................................................... 30
4.7 Jobs, social trust and institutions ..................................................................................... 32
Chapter 5 Summary of main findings ............................................................................................ 39
References ...................................................................................................................................... 40

1
List of Tables
Table 1 Interview status for households and randomly selected individual .............................. 9
Table 2 Household wealth asset index by location .................................................................. 10
Table 3 Household economic situation .................................................................................... 11
Table 4 Employment status (Age 18 and above) ..................................................................... 12
Table 5 RSI characteristics ....................................................................................................... 13
Table 6 Main employment status of RSI by reported activities ............................................... 14
Table 7 Logistic regression of labor force participation .......................................................... 15
Table 8 Household wealth index by proportion of employed persons ..................................... 17
Table 9 Household wealth index by employment status .......................................................... 18
Table 10 Benefits from employer by contract status................................................................ 24
Table 11 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with level of income ................. 28
Table 12 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with job potential for future ...... 29
Table 13 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with in social status from job ... 30
Table 14 Feature of job by education and type of work in percent .......................................... 31
Table 15 How meaningful people find their work related to empowerment? ......................... 32
Table 16 Level of trust by employment status ......................................................................... 33
Table 17 Regression results for index of trust.......................................................................... 35
Table 18 Level of confidence in institutions ............................................................................ 36
Table 19 Regression results on index of level of confidence in institutions ............................ 38

List of Figures
Figure 1 Overview of structure of instruments .......................................................................... 7
Figure 2 Preferred job by location and gender ......................................................................... 19
Figure 3 Job preferences in relation to location, gender, job status, age, education and socio-
economic status. Multivariate correspondence analysis .......................................................... 20
Figure 4 Job type easiest to pursue by location and gender ..................................................... 21
Figure 5 What job that is easiest to pursue in relation to location, gender, job status, age,
education and socio-economic status. Multivariate correspondence analysis ......................... 22
Figure 6 Most important job by location and gender ............................................................... 23
Figure 7 Distribution of benefits among wage workers ........................................................... 24
Figure 8 Satisfaction and number of job benefits .................................................................... 25
Figure 9 Level of satisfaction by work categories ................................................................... 26
Figure 10 Level of satisfaction by workers with and without contract .................................... 27
Figure 11 MCA loadings across two dimensions of trust indicators ....................................... 34
Figure 12 MCA loadings across dimensions of indicators of confidence in institutions ......... 37

2
Abbreviations and Acronyms
CATPCA Categorical Principal Component Analysis
CCA Cognitive-Creative-Autonomous
DANE Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica
DHS Demographic and Health Survey
MCA Multiple Correspondence Analysis
OLS Ordinary least squares
PSU Primary Selection Unit
RSI Randomly Selected Individual
WDR 2013 World Development Report 2013

3
Chapter 1 Introduction
Jobs have taken a center stage in the policy debate due to recent world developments ranging
from consequences of the financial crises to that of the Arab uprising that is partly fueled by
youth unemployment as well as political discontentment. The World Development Report 2013
focuses mainly on jobs and their connections with important dimensions of economic and social
development. To this end, jobs can be seen as having transformational roles in three dimensions:
living standards, productivity and social cohesion. In essence, focusing on what a good job for
development is from these perspectives will provide insights help address diverse job agendas.

The notion of a good job may seem normative but can also be anchored in basic economic
arguments. Instead of having a list of criteria such as structure of earning, health benefits, and
pension plans to characterize a job as good job, the WDR 2013 calls for focusing on the overall
features of a job as seen from its value in terms of increasing living standards, productivity
growth, and increasing social cohesion. However, it may be difficult to identify a single type of
job that is considered as good job in all dimensions. A job that is considered good in one aspect,
such as increasing income, may not necessarily be considered as prestigious job. Instead of trying
to focus on a single job, one may be interested to look into various facets of a given job and
conduct an assessment from different perspectives

This study has been conducted in order to better understand and explain how jobs are perceived
in a number of selected countries. The report is primarily targeted to provide inputs towards the
WDR 2013 and is part of a series of studies conducted on perception of good jobs in four
countries: Colombia, China, Egypt and Sierra Leone. The main emphasis has been to explore the
nature of jobs that affect living standards and enhance social cohesion. The report addresses the
following research questions:

- What are the most important factors affecting labor force participation?
- What are the relations between jobs and household wealth?
- Can perceptions and stereotyping of jobs be regarded as constraints for job creation?
- What are the linkages between job benefits and job stability?
- What are the determinants of job satisfactions?
- Jobs can be evaluated using a human empowerment perspective by focusing on three
features of job: cognitive, creative and autonomous activities. What is the relationship
between job status and human empowerment?
- Does inclusion in the labor force contribute to increased social trust and confidence in
institutions?

This study is conducted in the department of Risaralda, Colombia. Colombia has 32

administrative departments and Risaralda is located in the western central part of Colombia, in
the central Andean region with a total of 14 municipalities. Pereira, the capital city of Risaralda,
has the highest recorded rate of urban unemployment in Colombia. According to Departamento

4
Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica (DANE) the unemployment rate in Pereira was 17
percent in September 2011.

Colombia has experienced a long-standing conflict. It is difficult to discuss development issues in

Colombia separated from the conflict that has affected the country for more than 60 years.
However, this report will take a step aside from the conflict and focus on the aspect of jobs
among the population in the district of Pereira. For both communities and individuals, creation of
a stable income, jobs and social security can provide the means for both survival and recovery.

Risaralda is one of the three regions defined as „the coffee region‟: Risaralda, Quindio and
Caldas. All three departments suffer from high unemployment. In addition, Risaralda has areas
that are both directly and indirectly affected by the conflict and its west-central areas have been
most affected by the conflict. In the context of high level of unemployment and conflict,
understanding perception of good job will help devise relevant policy action and hence the reason
for selecting Risaralda as the study area.

This report is organized as follows. This chapter provides background to the study area. In
chapter two a description of the methodology used in this study is presented. Chapter three
presents description of the data collected for this study, including socio-economic background
and characteristics of labor force in the study area, Risaralda. Chapter four outlines the results
and discusses main findings. A summary of the main findings are made in the last chapter.

5
Chapter 2 Methods
2.1 Good jobs survey
The main objective of the survey was to obtain data on perceptions of jobs in addition to
obtaining information on basic labor force indicators, economy and social trust.

The main design characteristics of the sample used in this study were as follows:

1. The target population of the study was all households living in Risaralda, Colombia
2. The sample frame was the list of enumeration areas that were used for the recent Census
in Colombia (2005) where the information is updated by the local partner
ServInformación, which is a company specialized in geographic systems development
SIG, data collection, and methodological design.
3. The population was classified into two main reporting domains: rural and urban
4. Each domain received allocation of 45 primary sampling units (PSUs) (clusters)
5. The selection of clusters was based on probability proportionate to size (PPS)
6. In each of the clusters, 12 households were randomly selected using random walk
procedures
With this design, the survey was conducted in 90 clusters making up a total sample size of 1080
households.

2.2 Questionnaire
To understand the populations own perception of jobs calls for detailed information about what
„good‟ and „bad‟ job characteristics are and to understand the constraints of accessing a good job.
In addition, barriers to labor market entry and potential solutions for these barriers are important
indicators that could have policy relevance. An associated concept of job stereotypes could also
help highlight what is regarded as a good job and is obtained through vignettes depicting various
types of jobs, and a questionnaire was designed for this study.

Part I of the questionnaire was administered at the household level. The respondent for this part
of the questionnaire was the household head or any other eligible knowledgeable person who
could provide information for the household as well as other household members. The household
member is called for responding to questions on household level information such as
demographics, education, labor force participation to household members (age 14 and above),
household economic conditions and assets.

Part II of the questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected individual (RSI) in the
selected household. The RSI was selected among all household members aged 18 or above. The
RSI responded to a number of questions about the person‟s current job status and its associated
features; the person‟s own perceptions of jobs; issues regarding social trust, confidence on

6
various institutions and participations on social organizations. These question items are intended
to be answered only by the randomly selected individual. The structure of the questionnaire is
depicted in Figure 1 below.

All Household Members

(PART I) Selection of RSI

 Demographics

 Household composition

 Education
Information on RSI’s
 Labor force participation (PART II)
 Housing  Job status and features

 Economic conditions  Perceptions on job

 Assets
 Social trust and participation

Figure 1 Overview of structure of instruments

2.3 Empirical methods

Descriptive statistical methods including frequencies, means, graphs and tables are used to
describe the various indicators used in this study. In addition to the descriptive statistics, the
study employs regression models to explore relationship with various factors affecting the
dependent variable under investigation. Generally, the perception indicators used in this study are
measured using five Likert items: 1=Not at all satisfied; 2=somewhat unsatisfied; 3=neither;
4=somewhat satisfied; 5=very satisfied. These values make up an ordinal set and ordinary least
square (OLS) regression will not be suitable to explain the various job satisfaction indicators used
in the study as it can give estimates which imply predictions of the values outside the feasible
range. Hence, ordered logit regressions are used to explain factors affecting job satisfaction.

Another type of indicator used in the study takes binary values (0 or 1). Specifically, labor force
participation is recorded as whether individuals are in or out of the labor force. OLS will not be
suitable for dummy variable indicators either as it predicts values beyond 0 and 1. So, logistic
regression is used to explore factors influencing labor force participation.

Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) was used in this report to analyze the pattern of
relationships of several categorical variables. It is an extension of correspondence analysis (CA),
which was developed by Hirschfeld (1935) and Jean-Paul Benzécri (1973). MCA is part of a
family of descriptive methods, such as Principal Components Analysis, that use mathematical
procedure to reveal pattern in complex data sets. It is very useful in mapping both variables and
individuals so as to construct complex visual maps whose structuring can be interpreted. The
increasing use of visualizations in presentations makes this method more popular in illustrating
7
complex relationships between variables. The method is particularly suitable when responses to
question items are recorded in categorical scale. In this report, we employed Multiple
Correspondence Analysis in analyzing perception of different of jobs, social trust and confidence
in institutions. Technical description of the method can be obtained in Greenacre and Blasius.
2006.

This report also constructs a wealth index from a set of assets owned by the household. This
wealth index is a linear asset-based index, constructed following procedures as in the
Demographic and Health Surveys (Rustein and Kiersten 2004). It considers households‟ access to
durable consumer goods and other asset indicators related with housing, water, sanitary facilities
and other amenities owned by households. To construct this asset index, we use the following set
of mixed asset-based and health-related variables for determining wealth tertiles:

- Household ownership of consumer durables (mobile phone, sofa set, chair, table, bed,
mattress, mat, sewing machine, gas cooker, stove, water heater, water filter, electric
fan, vacuum cleaner, microwave, fridge, freezer, air conditioner, washing machine,
TV, radio, bicycle motorbike, cars, DVD player, satellite connection, internet access,
personal computer, photo camera, video camera)
- Characteristics of households‟ dwelling (number of rooms, floor material, electricity,
toilet facility, water sources)
- Households‟ ownership of dwelling

8
Chapter 3 Data
The survey was planned to cover 1080 households in both rural and urban areas of the
department of Risaralda. The survey has a response rate of 88 percent resulting in final sample
size of 956 households as shown in Table 1. This includes four percent of households with
partially completed interviews. Regarding the randomly selected individual survey, the response
rate is 77 percent resulting in a final sample size of 837 RSIs (including partly completed
interviews of RSIs).
Table 1 Interview status for households and randomly selected individual

Interview status Households (%) Randomly selected individual (%)

Interview completed 84 77
Interview partly completed 4 1
No contact 4 8
Refusal 7 1
Convinced for interview after refusal 0 -
No usable information 1 2
Incomplete household interview - 12
Total 100 100
Sample Size 1080 1080

The study did not conduct any substitution of households or RSIs that could not be contacted
during the survey period. This is mainly needed so as not to introduce a bias that may be due to
systematic absence of households and RSIs. In situations where people who do not work are
more likely to be at home, substitutions would increase a sampling bias through oversampling of
RSIs that are unemployed or outside the labor force. During the survey implementation, repeated
visits have been made to interview selected households and individuals and hence reduce non-
response rates of the survey.

3.1 Demographic and dwelling characteristics

The age and sex structure of individuals covered under the study exhibited a slightly higher
percentage of women (52 percent) than men. The average age for the total population living in
Risaralda was 34 years old.

The majority of the people live in houses or apartments, and 51 percent own the dwelling they
live in, with the number of rooms ranging from two to five. As many as 98 percent of households
reported that their houses are connected to electricity, and 92 percent have piped water into their
dwelling. The remaining households receive water from public taps, open wells or surface water.
Only a small percentage has rain water as their main source of water. In addition, the survey
found that 91 percent of households have toilets that are connected to piped sewer systems.
Although these results indicate that a large number of people have access to water and sanitation
facilities, the quality of some of these facilities might vary depending on the location. For
example, in one of the rural areas visited during the survey period, inhabitants had been without

9
water for almost three months at the time of the survey due to old pipes that needed repair. The
inhabitants did not know how long it would take before it would be repaired posing challenges
for day to day life activities. Electricity is priced according to the stratified social system in
Colombia. The higher strata1 people live in, the higher costs involved. Electricity service
providing companies did not necessarily follow the official strata system stipulated by the
government, but did their own investigations and decided the strata classifications accordingly.
Many of the respondents felt that this would make them vulnerable to price fluctuations.

3.2 Economic situations

Households‟ income was not asked in this survey, as good quality of income data is rather
difficult to collect in such small surveys. Instead, the set of consumer goods owned by
households, together with other asset indicators were asked by the survey. They were used to
construct a wealth index to identify households‟ economic situations. When ranking the
households‟ wealth index, household size was taken into account, that is, the ranking of the
wealth index was based on the population. And among all the households, they were grouped into
three groups, with each group containing one third of the population according to the constructed
wealth index.

The economic disparity between urban and rural was quite apparent. Table 2 shows households‟
economic situation in urban and rural areas in Risaralda. Around one fourth of the urban
households were ranked as the poorest, while as many as 68 percent of the rural households were
ranked as the poorest. Only 12 percent of the rural households and 38 percent of the urban
households were among the richest.
Table 2 Household wealth asset index by location

Urban (%) Rural (%) Total (%)

Poor third 24 68 32
Middle third 39 20 35
Rich third 38 12 33
Total 100 100 100
Sample size 428 471 899

In addition to using objective measure of wealth based on household assets, households were
interviewed to provide a subjective assessment of their economic situations that are classified into
three different categories: live well; neither rich nor poor and poor. The households‟ subjective
assessments on the economic situation indicate that 67 percent of households considered
themselves as living well while only 8 percent considered themselves as being poor (Table 3).
Slightly fewer households in the rural area considered them as living well (59 percent) than those
in the urban area (69 percent).
1
Colombia is divided into localities that are stratified into social systems, depending on income, economic stability,
living conditions etc. among the population. The stratification is conducted by the government, and each area is
given a strata number, ranging from one to six, where one is the poorest areas and six is the richest areas.

10
The implications from the subjective assessment does not necessary mean that they were
economically well off in objective terms as indicated using the wealth index. These subjective
assessments can be understood better when we consider peoples‟ expression in that peace is
important for a good life. The sense of security was highly appreciated among the people who did
not experience the conflict directly.

Table 3 Household economic situation

Urban (%) Rural (%) Total (%)

Subjective assessment We live well 69 59 67
on household We are neither rich nor poor 23 33 25
economic situation We are poor 8 7 8
Satisfaction with Fully satisfied 10 16 11
current financial Rather satisfied 47 40 46
situation Neither 7 8 7
Less than satisfied 16 17 16
Not at all satisfied 19 20 19
Financial situation Save money 5 3 5
during last year Just get by 63 70 64
Spent some savings 15 8 14
Spent savings and borrowed money 10 10 10
Only borrowed money 7 8 7
Sample size 425 492 917

In addition to these indicators households were also asked how satisfied that they were regarding
their current financial situation. Thirty six percent of the household were not satisfied with their
current financial situation and no apparent differences between urban and rural area, as shown in
Table 3. It was evident that many of the informants in the rural areas expressed that they felt a
sense of fellowship in their community. If one needed a favor, the other would help. The majority
of households in Risaralda did get by as indicated in Table 3. Households manage with the
income they earn and few households (4 percent) have some savings they can use in difficult
times. This can also be illustrated by the story of David, a shopkeeper in a small rural village in
Risaralda:2

David, the shop keeper

David is the owner of a small shop in one of the rural areas of Risaralda. He was born in another
department, but has lived in the region of Risaralda for some years now. It was home for him now.
He loves living in this area due to the safety and peace that exists. He had a small shop located
next to the main street of his rural village. He has owned the shop for around 15 years.

He says that one of the things he loves the most is the deep sense of belonging to the community
that resides in each of its members. When necessary, people would come to his shop and ask for

2
Interview conducted by main researcher during the fieldwork in Colombia

11
 credit on the goods they need. Despite the few unpaid bills some of his customers had left him, he
would do his best to help his people. He feels that his shop is a way of giving back to the
community and that by being there he is able to provide for the need of his neighbors. He also
recognizes the need to save and wisely invest in order to progress. The income from the shop only
provides enough to subsist, and it is necessary for him to engage in other businesses so that he
can have an additional income.

3.3 Labor force participation

For the purpose of this study we have used the ILO definition for unemployment. ILO defines the
unemployed as „the person who during the past seven days was without work, was currently
available for work and was seeking for work‟. Around 38 percent of individuals of age 18 and
above did not participate in the labor force (Table 4). Of the 62 percent economically active
individuals 17 percent were unemployed. While urban and rural labor force participation rate was
quite similar, unemployment rate is much higher in the urban area, double that of in the rural
area. The gender disparity in the labor market in Risaralda was quite contrasting where more
women were out of labor force than men. In all the interviewed households, more than half
women aged 18 and above were out of labor force, while only 23 percent adult men were not
active in the labor market. Among those in the labor market, the unemployment rate of women
(23 percent) was also much higher than men (13 percent) reflecting a gender inequality in terms
of labor market participation.
Table 4 Employment status (Age 18 and above)
Location (%) Gender (%)
Total (%)
Urban Rural Men Women
Employed 49 60 67 38 51
Employment status Unemployed 12 6 10 11 11
Out of labor force 40 33 23 51 38
Sample size 1206 1245 1126 1325 2451
Unemployment rate Employed 81 90 87 77 83
(ILO definition) Unemployed 19 10 13 23 17
Sample size 729 831 905 655 1560

3.4 Characteristics of randomly selected individuals

Altogether 837 RSIs were interviewed, among whom 393 were in urban area and 444 in rural
area. Table 5 shows the age and gender distribution, marital status, educational level,
employment status of the interviewed RSIs in the survey. The table also shows the wealth index
distribution of RSI‟s households, and whether the interviewed RSI had sickness of prolonged
nature. Around one-third of the interviewed RSIs were aged 18 to 34, one-fourth were 35 to 49
years old, another one-fourth were 50 to 64 years old, and 18 percent were 65 or older. The
gender distribution of RSI showed that more women were selected for RSI interviews than men.
The age and gender distributions of RSI were similar in both urban and rural areas. Half of the
RSIs were married or cohabitant, while 30 percent were single and never married.

12
Table 5 RSI characteristics

Urban (%) Rural (%) Total (%)

Age 18-34 30 34 31
35-49 24 27 25
50-64 27 23 26
65+ 19 16 18
Gender Male 38 40 38
Female 63 60 62
Marital status Single 30 28 30
Married/Cohabitant 49 56 51
Widow/Divorced/Separated 20 16 20
Education No school or no stage completed 16 42 21
Elementary or intermediate completed 39 28 37
Secondary (high school) or higher completed 45 30 42
Employment status Wage work 21 17 20
Farm work 1 8 2
Enterprises 20 16 19
Unemployed 9 7 9
Out of labor force 49 53 50
Wealth index Poor 24 65 31
Middle 37 21 34
Rich 39 14 35
Physical or psychological Yes 14 15 14
illness of prolonged nature No 86 85 86
Total 100 100 100
Sample size 393 444 837

The educational level completed by the interviewed RSI varied quite much. As many as 45
percent of the urban RSIs completed secondary high school or higher education, while it was 30
percent in rural area. While almost half of RSI completed secondary or higher education, one-
fifth of the RSIs have never been in school or did not complete elementary school. In rural area,
as many as 43 percent were never in school or did not complete any level; while in urban area, it
was 18 percent. As to the employment status, one fifth of the RSIs were wage earners, and
another one-fifth was self-employed or worked in family business. Only 2 percent worked mainly
as agricultural work, even in rural area, only 8 percent reported their main activity to be farming.
Half of the interviewed RSIs were out of labor force, while 8 percent were unemployed.

One third of RSIs belonged to each tertile group of wealth index, which was calculated for each
interviewed households. Rural RSIs were in relatively poor situation: while only 14 percent of
the rural RSIs were among the richest group, 65 percent of the rural respondents were among the
poorest. Finally, 14 percent of the RSIs reported to have Physical or psychological illness of
prolonged nature.

Table 5 describes the characteristics of the RSIs and what type of work they mainly were
involved in the last 12 months. However, many people were engaged in more than one activity.

13
Table 6 describes how 17 percent who specified their main activity to be wage work during the
last 12 months also conducted additional wage or self-employment activities. Among the people
who were self-employed, as many as 40 percent conducted wage work or agricultural work in
addition to their private business. Among the people who had agricultural work as their main
activity only seven percent conducted this type of activity alone. However, among the population
that did not have a job or were out of the labour force, few conducted any type of income related
activities.
Table 6 Main employment status of RSI by reported activities

Main employment status in the last 12 months (%)

Out of
All work activities conducted in the last Agricultural Self Un-
Wage work 1 3 labor Total
12 months work employed employed 4
force
2
No work - - - 87 83 49
Wage work 83 - - 9 8 22
Agricultural work* - 7 - 0 0 0
Self-employed - - 60 1 5 14
Wage and agricultural work* 4 47 - 0 0 2
Wage and self 11 - 35 0 2 10
Self-employed and agricultural work - 27 4 3 1 2
Wage, agricultural work and self-
2 20 1 0 0 1
employed
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100
Sample size 147 39 159 64 428 837
1
On household farms owned by own family (farm work on for others is considered as wage work)
2
- Not possible
3
Not working last 12 months, searching for work last seven days
4
Not working last 12 months, not searching for work last seven days

As described in Table 6 one of the coping strategies of the people in Risaralda is to be involved
in a number of different activities. The story of Robert, who worked both as self-employed and as
a wage worker on short term contracts describes this.3

Robert, the construction worker

Robert had his own construction business. However, he was not always able to provide
for his family of eight people on the income from his private business, and they struggled
from time to time to make the ends meet. Although his main preference was to work as an
entrepreneur in his own business, but he had to conduct other types of labor when the
contracts were difficult to find.

They had received some aid from both their extended family and from the government,
which had made it possible to build a house for the household. He worked from time to
time as a coffee collector during the harvest period; however, this was seasonal and
3
Interview conducted by main researcher during the fieldwork in Colombia

14
 therefore not sustainable income. He lived in the outskirt a semi-urban town, and
commuted into town two days per week to work as a wage worker at the market square
butchery. He was the only one in the household with an income. His wife and his sister-in-
law had conducted technical education courses in areas such as baking and pastry
making, but had not been able to find work at the time of the interview.

Chapter 4 Results
In this chapter, we will present the main results. Section 4.1 presents determinants of labor force
participation among the population aged 18 and above. The relationship between jobs and the
household wealth are explored in section 4.2. Section 4.3 deals with perception about job types
and how this differs by different social categories. Section 4.4 presents job benefits to wage
workers. Job satisfactions assessed from different perspectives are presented in section 4.5. The
role of job in empowering people is presented in section 4.6. The last section presents how
having a job influences social trust and confidence in institutions.

4.1 Determinants of labor force participation

The previous section discussed characteristics of people in and outside the labor force. In this
section, we will investigate the features of individuals that are relevant for labor force
participation. We conducted a logistic regression for the population in age group 18-65 and the
results are shown in Table 7 below.
Table 7 Logistic regression of labor force participation

3 Odds
Variables Estimate Std. Error P-value
ratio
Female, compared to Male -1.789 0.123 0.000 ** 0.167
Age 0.146 0.026 0.000 ** 1.157
Age squared -0.204 0.032 0.000 ** 0.998
1
Elementary completed -0.015 0.000 0.932 0.985
1
Intermediate completed -0.106 0.170 0.609 0.899
1
Secondary or higher level completed 0.500 0.208 0.004 ** 1.649
2
Slightly difficult health condition -1.063 0.174 0.000 ** 0.345
2
Difficult health condition -0.584 0.000 0.112 0.558
Household size -0.100 0.275 0.252 0.905
Dependency ratio 0.069 0.367 0.802 1.072
Wealth index -0.208 0.087 0.003 ** 0.812
Urban compared to rural -0.107 0.277 0.384 0.898
Constant 1.696 0.070 0.003 5.450
-2 Log likelihood 2016.53
1 2 3
Compared to No Education; Compared to No health problems; Significant at 5% level are starred.
Household population 18-65 years old, n=1933

15
Women are less likely to participate in the labor market
The logistic regression model shows that women are less likely to participate in the labor market
as compared to men exhibited by the negative and significant relationship with likelihood of
labor force participation. This is in line with the descriptive observation made earlier in that
women are mainly working in their own home. In addition, this is in line with the modern, global
economy where the women tend to occupy the lowest paying and the most unstable jobs. In
Colombia more than 80 percent of the female workers receive less than the legal minimum wage

Higher education is key for labor force participation

Secondary or higher education is positively related to probability of participating in the labor
force. The relatively insignificant but negative relationship of lower level education shows the
relative importance of having a higher education to participate in the labor market.

As in other countries there is a slight lag between studies and the availability of workforce for a
specific sector. In a way there is a greater offer of professionals to match the needs of business
and employers alike this has led to positions that are occupied by individuals whose preparation
and studies are above the required fields for a certain job description. On the other hand there are
also job offers that offset the requirements for the available job market, for example there may be
a job offer for a company director under 30 years old with 5 or 7 years of experience and a
masters at minimum to occupy a position which is almost impossible to fill.

Health matters
Self-reported chronic health status of individuals is a key indicator that determines labor force
participation. The reported chronic health status is classified into three categories: individuals
who has no reported health problem; individuals with slightly difficult health situation in that
they have reported health problem but are less hindered to go out on their own; individuals who
have health problems that makes it difficult to move around by themselves. Individuals with
slightly difficult health conditions are less likely to participate in the labor force.

Less participation for the wealthier

Wealth of individuals as measured by using a wealth index constructed from the list of assets is
found to be negatively related to the likelihood of labor force participation. This may be an
indication of preference for leisure.

Household size, Dependency ratio and Location

These indicators are found to have statistically insignificant relationship with that of labor force
participation. However, as indicated by the signs, household size negatively influences the
likelihood of labor force participation. On the other hand, when the dependency ratio increases,
individuals are highly likely to participate in the labor force. Urban dwellers are less likely to
participate in the labor force.

16
4.2 Jobs and household wealth
Higher employment not significantly contribute to household economy
Table 8 shows the ranking of households‟ wealth index in all the interviewed households in
Risaralda by the proportion of employed members in the household. It indicates that in urban
area, households were slightly better-off when more people were employed in the households.
But the differences between the groups were not large. However, in rural area, the number of
household members employed did not have apparent correlation with households‟ wealth. The
households with all the members employed were poorer than other households, while the
households with over 40 percent of the members employed but not all were relatively well-off.
Table 8 Household wealth index by proportion of employed persons

Wealth index tertile (%)

Proportion of members Sample
Poor Total (%)
employed Mid third Rich third size
third
No employed member 23 48 29 100 114
0.01 to 0.40 25 38 37 100 154
Urban 0.41 to 0.99 23 32 45 100 114
All are employed 24 30 46 100 46
Total 24 39 38 100 428
No employed member 63 27 10 100 83
0.01 to 0.40 67 24 9 100 152
Rural 0.41 to 0.99 64 16 20 100 153
All are employed 81 10 10 100 83
Total 68 19 13 100 471

Employment type related more with households’ economic situation

The households‟ wealth was related with the type of work conducted by the household, as
illustrated in Table 9. Households that conducted agricultural activities had low wealth index: 86
percent of them were in the poorest group, while only 7 percent were in the middle and 8 percent
were in the richest group. When household members conducted salary work together with self-
employment or family business in rural area, the households were more likely among the well-
offs. Only one third of the rural households whose members had both wage work and family or
self-employed business were among the poorest, while 28 percent were among the richest. In the
urban area, the type of employment did not play such big roles in improving household economic
situation as that in rural area. But households with wage employment or both salary work and
self-employment were relatively better-off than those with only self-employment. That is, 42
percent of the households with wage employment were among the richest, and only 18 percent
were among the poorest; while 36 percent of those only had self-employment or family business
were among the poorest.

The households without any employed members were not found to have particularly difficult
economic situation, except that relatively fewer of them in the urban area were in the richest
17
group of wealth index. However, around 40 percent of the households without any employed
members had some members who were looking for job, and the rest of them had relatively few
members in working age. They might rely mostly on pension or assistances. Furthermore, wealth
index measures households‟ long-run economic condition, while the income might correlates
more closely with the employment, but measures short-term situation. Therefore, these
households did not stand out as the most difficult ones.
Table 9 Household wealth index by employment status

Wealth index tertile (%) Sample

Location Total (%)
Poor Mid Rich size
No employment 23 48 29 100 114
Only wage employ 18 40 42 100 158
Urban Only self-employment 36 29 36 100 53
Wage employment and self-employment 26 31 43 100 103
Total 23 39 38 100 428
No employment 63 27 10 100 83
Only wage employ 70 17 13 100 175
Only self-employment 47 33 20 100 41
Rural Agriculture together with other
86 7 7 100 121
employment
Wage employment and self-employment 33 39 28 100 51
Total 67 20 13 100 471

4.3 Perception about job types

Randomly selected individuals were asked to choose from eight different types of professions
and rank them according to their preference. This is in order to understand job stereotyping that
will shed light on features of good jobs by ranking them across three different dimensions:
preference for them, most important to society and easiest to pursue.

The preferred jobs are different in the urban and the rural setting. The most preferred job in the
urban areas of Risaralda was to work as a government employee. More than 30 percent of the
men and more than 20 percent of the women answered that this would be their first choice of
work (Figure 2). This is not surprising, as a job as a government employee would offer them a
steady income and make the income more predictable. Pereira, the capital of Risaralda, is a city
that struggle with high unemployment and insecure income sources. Secure income is therefore
attractive. The same is the case for the preference of being a teacher and a doctor. These are jobs
that require skills and that offer a regular income. In addition, being a shop owner is a much
preferred job both in the urban and the rural areas. In particular, the women responded that they
preferred the job as a shop owner.

In rural Risaralda, being a farmer is the most preferred job among the male population. Although
the access to own land is difficult and most people involved in farming activities are wage
workers, this is the most preferred job by more than 20 percent of the respondents.
18
Figure 2 Preferred job by location and gender4

Figure 3 shows a map of people‟s preference of jobs, by a number of characteristics among the
population using multivariable correspondence analysis. The characteristics which are related
have a short separating distance, while characteristics that are not linked are spread apart.

The plot shows that each of the work categories falls in its own quadrant. Quadrant I can be
labeled „the rural, poor and excluded‟, this group was not part of the labor force and lived in the
rural areas and had a low level of education. Quadrant II can be labeled „the young and
unemployed‟ as the characteristics of this group were that they were aged between 18 and 34
years and not employed. Quadrant III can be labeled „the rich wage workers‟. They were living in
the urban areas; they lived well and worked as wage employers. Quadrant IV can be labeled „the
self-made man‟ and they were male self-employed workers aged 50 and above. The findings in
Figure 3 show that the young and unemployed preferred jobs that required education, such as to
be a doctor, a teacher or a government employer. On the other hand, the self-made men preferred
to work as a farmer, a carpenter or as a taxi driver. In general they preferred professions that do

4
n=794 adults 18-65 years of age in Risaralda, Colombia: January 2012

19
not necessary require formal education, but rather experience, access to land or access to a
vehicle. Among the rich wage workers and the rural, poor and excluded, the findings revealed
weaker preferences to what type of job they preferred.

Figure 3 Job preferences in relation to location, gender, job status, age, education and socio-economic status. Multivariate
correspondence analysis

On the question of what job that is easiest to pursue, shop owner range high across all categories.
In particular in the urban area this is considered most accessible to the people. In the city, people
can start small businesses either on the street or as a part of their house. It does not necessary
require a location or to rent a venue, nor does it require formal education.

In the rural areas, the gender difference regarding what people consider easiest to pursue is quite
visible (Figure 4). Almost 40 percent of the men answered that farming was the easiest job to
pursue, whereas 40 percent of the women answered that to become a shop owner is the job they
find easiest to pursue.

20
Figure 4 Job type easiest to pursue by location and gender5

Figure 5 shows a map of what the population in Risaralda found easiest to pursue, using
multivariable correspondence analysis, as described for Figure 3. The job statuses are in the same
quadrant as in Figure 3, and the labels are the same as described above.

The findings in Figure 5 shows similar trends as described in Figure 3; the young and
unemployed population perceived it easiest to pursue professions that require a university degree
and have ambitions to work as doctors, teachers or government employees. They had higher
ambitions in terms of academic jobs and did not seem to neither prefer nor pursue jobs that are
manual, such as being a farmer, a carpenter or a taxi driver. The self-made man found the same
categories of jobs he preferred to have to be the ones that were easiest to pursue. On the other
hand, the wage workers did not seem to have strong preferences on what jobs they found easy to
pursue, and the same was the case among the people outside the labor force.

5
n=764 adults 18-65 years of age in Risaralda, Colombia 2012

21
Figure 5 What job that is easiest to pursue in relation to location, gender, job status, age, education and socio-economic
status. Multivariate correspondence analysis

The response to what type of job is most important for the society is quite similar across location
and gender (Figure 6). Doctors and teachers rank the highest, followed by government
employment and farmers. Taxi drivers, hair dressers, carpenters and shop owners are ranked low
along the dimension of importance for society.

22
Figure 6 Most important job by location and gender6

4.4 Job benefits for wage workers

In this section, we will describe job associated benefits for wage employees. This will help assess
the labor market situation for wage employees in addition to providing a basis for assessing job
satisfaction in the subsequent sections. All wage employees with long term contract receive
health insurance from their employers. In addition to health insurance, pension after retirement,
transportation allowance and learning opportunities are provided to employees with long term
contracts. Job benefits is strongly related to the type of job contract a person has and as can be
seen from Table 10, employees with long term wage contract has more benefits as compared to
employees with short term contracts (less than one year).

6
n=795 adults 18-65 years of age in Risaralda, Colombia: January 2012

23
Table 10 Benefits from employer by contract status

Job related benefits Short term contract (%) Long term contract (%)*
Health insurance from employer 25 100
Pension after retirement 23 98
Transportation allowances 26 87
Learning opportunities 34 78
Maternity leave 24 69
Bonuses 24 62
School fees 4 48
Free meals 39 30
Housing allowances 2 15
Unemployment benefits 1 14
Stock shares 5 14
Sample size 83 62
* Long term contract=contract for one year or more

The contrast between benefits for employees with long and short term contracts becomes sharp
when the number of benefits provided is taken into account. To this end, long-term contract
employees have large number of benefits as compared to short term contract employees (Figure
7).

Figure 7 Distribution of benefits among wage workers7

All wage workers were asked about their access to different benefits and their evaluation on the
different work benefits. Around 12 to 18 percent of the respondents were not willing to pay for
the benefits, while around half of the respondents could not tell how much they would like to pay
for each work benefit. People acknowledged the value of the work benefits, but most found it
difficult to measure such work benefits in monetary value.

7
n=140 wageworkers in Risaralda, Colombia: Jan 2012

24
Even though, the work benefits had actually quite high correlation with people‟s satisfaction in
the work. All the interviewed wage earners were classified into one of the four groups, according
to their accesses to different work benefits. The work benefits here refer to the list of benefits in
Table 10. Among all the wage workers, 12 percent did not have any benefits connected to their
work, one-fifth had 1 to 2 types of work benefits, and 30 percent had 3 to 5 or 6 to 8 work
benefits, respectively. Only 8 percent wage workers had more than 8 kinds of work benefits.

In Figure 8 these four groups of people and their satisfaction with job stability, form of contract,
training and skill development, social status from job, potential for future personal development
and level of income are listed. The answers “very satisfied” and “somewhat satisfied” were
grouped to be presented as “satisfied” for all the questions. This group of people who enjoyed
most work benefits was most satisfied with almost all aspects of their work, and in particular
satisfied with job stability and form of contract. However they were least satisfied with their
income. Their satisfaction with their income was only slight less than those who had 6 to 8 work
benefits, but higher than those who had very little access to work benefits. People who had
relatively more work benefits (4 to 7 work benefits) were least satisfied with the potential of their
work for their future personal development. Those who had very limited or no access to the work
benefits were most dissatisfied with the form of work contract. Among those who did not have
any access to the work benefits, only 30 or 40 percent of people reported to be satisfied with
different aspects of their job.

Figure 8 Satisfaction and number of job benefits

25
 4.5 Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is an indicator of workers‟ happiness and is in a number of studies shown to be
good both for workers and employers. Workers that are satisfied have positive organizational
behavior and tend to perform better and are more likely to receive rewards realized in the form of
promotion and pay rises (Clark and Oswald 1996, Diener and Seligman 2004, Fassina et al 2008).
In this study, workers were asked about their satisfaction with difference facets of their job.

Overall, 58 percent of the people with employment in Risaralda were somewhat or very satisfied
with their current level of income. The group of people who was most satisfied with their current
income was contract workers and as Figure 9 illustrates did 67 percent report that they were
somewhat or very satisfied with their salary. The group that reported the least satisfaction was the
people who were working in a family enterprise: 45 percent reported that they were somewhat
unsatisfied or not satisfied with their current income. However, the people who reported the
highest satisfaction with their work hours were the people without contracts (Figure 9).

Figure 9 Level of satisfaction by work categories

The level of satisfaction for people between people who were hired with and without contract
was different regarding the level of job stability and opportunities for training and skills
development. As many as 90 percent of the people who were hired with contract reported that
they were somewhat or very satisfied with their job stability, compared to 68 percent among
people who were hired without a contract. Only six percent of people with contract responded
that they were somewhat satisfied with their job stability, and no one reported that they were not
satisfied at all. This was different from the people hired without a contract, where 28 percent
reported that they were somewhat unsatisfied or not satisfied at all with their job stability.

26
The satisfaction with potential opportunities for both training and skills development
opportunities varied between the contract workers and people with no contract. This is not
surprising as wageworkers without contract more often tend to change work and therefore do not
have the time or the capacity to develop new skills in the trades they are involved in. In the rural
areas, a common non-contract employment is to help the farmers with the harvest. This is a trade
known to most people as manual and repetitive work that does not encourage further
development.

Figure 10 Level of satisfaction by workers with and without contract

Among the various aspects in which people have evaluated their level of satisfaction, we focus on
three facets: satisfaction with their level of income; satisfaction in their job potential for future
development and satisfaction in social status they obtain from their job. We conducted ordered
logit regression analysis on each of these satisfaction indicators that are measured as a single
index on likert scale (1=not at all satisfied, 2=somewhat satisfied, 3=neither, 4=somewhat
satisfied, 5=very satisfied.)

The job satisfaction-age relationship is U-shaped; other things being equal, job satisfaction
initially declines with age, but then tends to increase after the turning point is reached. This result
is consistent with findings reported in earlier studies: the youngest and oldest workers tend to
have highest job satisfaction (Clark et al 1996). In addition, as wealth increased the level of
satisfaction the level of income also increased. Satisfaction on level of income was also

27
significantly related to the usefulness of the job people were conducting. Specifically, the data
also show that the satisfaction with the level of income increased when the job was useful for
information about societal matters and the decision making in the household. This finding
indicates that job satisfaction is derived from associated uses of the job in addition to simply job
being a source of income (Table 11).
Table 11 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with level of income

1
Variables Estimate Std. Error P-value
Female, compared to Male -0.390 0.251 0.120
Age -0.100 0.051 0.052 *
Age squared 0.109 0.055 0.047 **
Wealth 0.448 0.135 0.001 **
More than one job -0.112 0.260 0.668
Employment status -0.097 0.148 0.509
Number of hours worked per week -0.006 0.006 0.323
Type of tasks (Creative versus routine) -0.046 0.042 0.273
Level of Independence 0.015 0.042 0.718
Level of Meaningfulness of Job 0.109 0.059 0.063 *
Usefulness of job for:
Establishing contacts with people -0.152 0.144 0.291
Learning new things 0.080 0.130 0.539
Information about other jobs 0.075 0.114 0.512
Information about societal matters 0.250 0.113 0.026 **
Information about good deals -0.072 0.110 0.514
Decision making in household 0.388 0.124 0.002 **
Urban compared to rural -0.709 0.270 0.009 **
-2 log likelihood 712
Sample size ( All employed RSIs) 277
1
Significant at 5% level (**) and 10% level (*)

Another important factor that determines the level of satisfaction with the future potential of the
job people conduct (Table 12) was the level of meaningfulness they attached to the job they
carried out. The level of satisfaction was also related to opportunity provided as a result of having
the job towards learning new things, obtaining information about other job opportunities and
societal matters.

28
Table 12 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with job potential for future

1
Variables Estimate Std. Error P-value
Female, compared to Male -0.383 0.254 0.132
Age -0.008 0.051 0.875
Age squared 0.015 0.055 0.782
Wealth 0.193 0.134 0.151
More than one job -0.129 0.263 0.623
Employment status 0.087 0.149 0.558
Number of hours worked per week -0.007 0.006 0.204
Type of tasks (Creative versus routine) 0.029 0.043 0.498
Level of Independence 0.028 0.042 0.510
Level of Meaningfulness of Job 0.223 0.060 0.000 **
Usefulness of job for:
Establishing contacts with people -0.085 0.143 0.554
Learning new things 0.410 0.131 0.002 **
Information about other jobs 0.285 0.115 0.013 **
Information about societal matters 0.202 0.114 0.076 *
Information about good deals -0.013 0.111 0.904
Decision making in household 0.023 0.123 0.852
Urban compared to rural -0.351 0.270 0.193
-2 log likelihood 693
Sample size ( All employed RSIs) 277
1
Significant at 5% level (**) and 10% level (*)

Jobs can be classified as good or bad depending on the social status people associated with their
activities. This could be a barrier for unemployed people to engage themselves in income earning
work. Hence, the level of satisfaction in social status from a given job is another indicator of a
good job. This level of satisfaction was positively influenced by wealth, employment status, level
of meaningfulness of the job they carry out, and usefulness of their current work in terms of
learning new things as well as obtaining information about societal matters (Table 13).

29
Table 13 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with in social status from job

1
Variables Estimate Std. Error P-value
Female, compared to Male -0.215 0.256 0.400
Age -0.031 0.052 0.547
Age squared 0.048 0.056 0.383
Wealth 0.477 0.140 0.001 **
More than one job 0.329 0.268 0.220
Employment status -0.323 0.152 0.034 **
Number of hours worked per week -0.004 0.006 0.496
Type of tasks (Creative versus routine) -0.025 0.044 0.569
Level of Independence 0.035 0.043 0.420
Level of Meaningfulness of Job 0.235 0.060 0.000 **
Usefulness of job for:
Establishing contacts with people 0.098 0.142 0.489
Learning new things 0.269 0.131 0.040 **
Information about other jobs 0.070 0.114 0.541
Information about societal matters 0.424 0.116 0.000 **
Information about good deals 0.049 0.112 0.662
Decision Making in household 0.012 0.123 0.919
Urban compared to Rural -0.165 0.273 0.545
-2 log likelihood 655
Sample size ( All employed RSIs) 277
1
Significant at 5% level (**

From these various satisfaction assessments, we understand that perception of good job is related
to age, wealth, meaningfulness of the job as well as ability to obtain information relevant for job
related and societal issues. It is also summarized in the following figure where we see that level
of meaningfulness of a job has come out strongly as a factor in the last two dimensions: social
status and opportunities for future development.

4.6 Jobs and empowerment

Jobs can be perceived from a human empowerment perspective (Alexander and Welzel 2011)
with cognitive, creative and autonomous dimensions (CCA). As shown in Table 14, the jobs in
Risaralda are characterized by being manual labor, dominated by routine work, and with a high
level of autonomy. In addition people who work find their work meaningful – more than 75
percent rate their job as meaningful with a sense of doing something useful. These patterns are
the same independent of education and current job status, as shown in Table 14. However there is
a tendency that people with wage employment have slightly more cognitive work than the self-
employed have. While the self-employed have much more autonomy in their work than the wage
workers. With a higher education people will have work that is somewhat more cognitive and
more creative than for the ones without education. However, also for the ones with most
education, most of them still have work that they characterize as mainly manual and routine.

30
Table 14 Feature of job by education and type of work in percent

Total
Job status (%) Education (%)
(%)
Wage Self- No stage Elementary/ Secondary
employment employment completed intermediate or higher
Manual 43 60 69 63 40 51
1
Cognitive Intermediate 36 22 26 27 30 29
Cognitive 22 18 5 10 30 20
Routine 57 54 68 52 54 55
2
Creative Both 27 26 27 30 24 26
Creative 16 20 5 18 22 19
Low 55 11 40 28 33 32
3
Autonomy Medium 30 18 18 17 27 23
High 15 71 43 55 40 45
Meaning- Low 6 2 7 1 4 4
fullness in Medium 22 21 29 18 21 21
4
the job High 72 76 63 81 74 75
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100
Sample size 139 194 74 95 159 328
1
Cognitive: Are the task in your work mostly manual or mostly cognitive. Rate from 1 (mostly manual) to 10
(mostly cognitive) – Manual 1-3; Intermediate 4-7; Cognitive 8-10
2
Creative: Are the task you perform mostly routine or mostly creative. Rate from 1 (mostly routine) to 10
(mostly creative) – Routine 1-3; Both 4-7; Creative 8-10
3
Autonomy: How much independence do you have in performing your tasks at your main job? Rate from 1 (No
independence at all) to 10 (complete independence) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10
4
Meaningfulness in the job: How meaningful is your main job? Rate from 1 (Not meaningful at all) to 10
(Very meaningful and gives a sense of doing something useful) ) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10

Regarding how meaningful people find their job, there are no differences between the wage
workers and the self-employed. However, those with at least some education find the job more
meaningful than people without any education. A good job will very often be a job that people
find meaningful. And in that aspect most working people in Risaralda have good jobs. Compared
to the CCA dimension, Table 15 shows that the more people characterize their job as cognitive,
creative and autonomous, the more meaningful they find their job.

31
Table 15 How meaningful people find their work related to empowerment?

Meaningfulness in the job (%)

Not Very
meaningful Medium meaningful Total (%) Sample size
1
Cognitive Manual 9 20 71 100 189
Intermediate 1 21 78 100 89
Cognitive 0 15 85 100 53
2
Creative Routine 9 20 71 100 187
Both 1 18 80 100 82
Creative 0 18 82 100 62
3
Autonomy Low 14 24 63 100 88
Medium 3 26 71 100 68
High 2 14 84 100 170
Total 6 19 75 100 326
1
Cognitive: Are the task in your work mostly manual or mostly cognitive. Rate from 1 (mostly manual) to 10 (mostly cognitive) –
Manual 1-3; Intermediate 4-7; Cognitive 8-10
2
Creative: Are the task you perform mostly routine or mostly creative. Rate from 1 (mostly routine) to 10 (mostly creative) – Routine
1-3; Both 4-7; Creative 8-10
3
Autonomy: How much independence do you have in performing your tasks at your main job? Rate from 1 (No independence at all)
to 10 (complete independence) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10
4
Meaningfulness in the job: How meaningful is your main job? Rate from 1 (Not meaningful at all) to 10 (Very meaningful and gives
a sense of doing something useful) ) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10

4.7 Jobs, social trust and institutions

Several variables have been identified to capture the degree of social trust including trust in
family, neighbors, friends, people met for the first time, people from workplace, another religion
and another ethnic group. Two categories ”Trust completely” and ”Trust somewhat” were
merged as ”Trust”, while two categories ”Not trust very much” and ”Not trust at all” were
merged as ”Not trust”. As can be seen in Table 16, wage employees had higher trust on people
from different places, which probably reflected the role of job in social cohesion. Unemployed
people and self-employed seemed to have generally lower level of trust in people. In general,
people showed higher trust on the family, friends and neighbors than other people. However, we
also found that around 10 to 20 percent of people reported “difficult to say” in different trust
questions, as indicated in Table 16.

32
Table 16 Level of trust by employment status

Wage Self- Out of labor

Trust towards people
employment employment Unemployed force
Trust 93 94 86 89
Family
Difficult to say 1 0 0 1
Trust 47 47 52 51
Neighbors
Difficult to say 2 1 2 1
Trust 62 40 52 44
Friends
Difficult to say 2 3 4 2
Trust 12 6 6 9
People met for first time
Difficult to say 1 3 4 6
Trust 60 35 26 23
People from workplace
Difficult to say 1 10 20 32
Trust 19 15 21 17
People from another religion
Difficult to say 7 8 4 17
Trust 22 19 25 24
People form another ethnic group
Difficult to say 7 13 9 18
Sample size 146 197 64 427
Values show percentage of people who have complete or somehow complete trust

Since we have more than one social trust indicators, it is important to identify the underlying
components of the indicators while maximizing the amount of variance accounted for in those
indicators. While many respondents chose the “difficult to say” category, together with the scale
categories of the questions on trust and confidence, it is then inappropriate to treat these variables
as scale variables. Therefore, MCA is a more appropriate tool to analyze the relationships of
questions on trust towards people, and questions on confidence in institutions, respectively.

33
Figure 11 MCA loadings across two dimensions of trust indicators

The joint plot of category points in Figure 11 identifies two dimensions out of the trust towards
people. Apparently, “difficult to say” has its own dimension which is captured in the second
dimension, while first dimension captures people‟s general trust level. In the first dimension, the
higher the loading is, the less people trusted others; while the lower the loading is, the more
people trusted others. Therefore, we can construct an index of trust by using the object scores on
dimension one. In order to understand the role of job on social trust, we can conduct regression
by using the trust index and the results from regression are presented in Table 17. As the higher
index indicates a low trust, we reverse the index in order to simplify the interpretation, that is, the
higher index represents higher trust level.

Table 17 shows that wage employment is an essential factor that has been identified to have
positive influence for trust indexes. People that were unemployed out of the labor force and self-
employed people had less trust compared to wage employees. It is also interesting to note that
rural people had higher trust towards people compared with urban people. Although not
significant, the positive coefficients on age and wealth index indicate that old and rich people had
relatively more trust towards others.

34
Table 17 Regression results for index of trust

Trust
Variables
Estimate Std. Error t-value
Constant -0.664 0.308 -2.154**
Women compared to men 0.045 0.079 0.571
Age 0.016 0.011 1.402
Age squared -0.008 0.012 -0.677
Rural compared to urban 0.177 0.102 1.745*
Employment status:
1
Self-employment/ family business -0.388 0.114 -3.387***
1
Unemployed -0.089 0.148 -0.602
1
Out of labor force -0.175 0.104 -1.676*
Wealth Index 0.070 0.046 1.520
Sample size 836
1
Base category is wage worker
***Significance level 1%, **Significance level 5%, *Significance level 10%

In addition to the trust indicators, respondents were asked to provide information on their level of
confidence in various institutions. These institutions range from governmental institutions to that
of local and international organizations. The percentages of people that had confidence or found
it difficult to say are shown in Table 18. Again, quite a few people reported “difficult to say” on
the confidence questions.

35
Table 18 Level of confidence in institutions

Wage Self- Out of labor

employment employment Unemployed force
Trust 30 33 48 35
Head of state
Difficult to say 4 5 3 5
Trust 21 30 26 24
National government
Difficult to say 6 4 15 8
Trust 14 20 22 22
People's Congress
Difficult to say 7 5 13 8
Trust 19 20 21 19
Courts
Difficult to say 5 5 13 9
Trust 17 18 24 18
Political parties
Difficult to say 5 5 13 8
Trust 61 68 64 65
Armed forces
Difficult to say 1 0 4 3
Trust 42 33 48 35
Banks
Difficult to say 7 5 3 5
Trust 22 30 26 24
Local government
Difficult to say 3 4 15 8
Trust 42 20 22 22
Television
Difficult to say 1 5 13 8
Trust 55 20 21 19
Civil service
Difficult to say 2 5 13 9
Trust 22 20 21 19
International companies
Difficult to say 10 5 13 9
Trust 28 18 24 18
State companies
Difficult to say 6 5 13 8
Trust 28 5 13 8
Private companies
Difficult to say 6 32 31 33
Trust 29 68 64 65
Local NGOs
Difficult to say 10 0 4 3
Trust 32 37 52 37
International NGOs
Difficult to say 10 5 4 9
Sample size 146 197 64 427
Values show percentage of people who have complete or somehow complete Confident

All the 15 indicators are used to capture people‟s confidence in institutions, and we conducted
MCA to construct a confidence index. The component loadings for two dimensions out of
component analysis are shown in Figure 12. We can see that “difficult to say” has its own
dimension which is captured in the first dimension, while second dimension captures people‟s
general confidence level in institutions. In second dimension, the higher the loading is, the more
people are confident in institutions; while the lower the loading is the lower confidence people
had in institutions.

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Figure 12 MCA loadings across dimensions of indicators of confidence in institutions

Therefore, we constructed an index of confidence by using the object scores on dimension two.
We further investigated factors affecting level of confidence by using regression models with the
confidence index as dependent variable. The results from regression are presented in Table 19.
The result from the regression shows that compared to wage employees; unemployed people had
confidence in the institutions. This may not be surprising as knowledge of institutions matter and
wage employees are assumed to be relatively better off in terms of understanding the functioning
of institutional systems and hence have a better informed confidence on these institutions. On the
other hand, women had lower confidence in institutions compared to men. Finally, people living
in rural areas had a high level of confidence in governmental institutions. Again, although not
significant, coefficients on age and wealth index indicate that people had less confidence in
institutions when they grew old; while rich people had higher confidence in institutions.

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Table 19 Regression results on index of level of confidence in institutions

Confidence
Variables
Estimate Std. Error t-value
Constant 0.441 0.307 1.437
Women compared to men -0.363 0.079 -4.617***
Age -0.005 0.011 -0.490
Age squared 0.008 0.012 0.736
Rural compared to urban 0.176 0.101 1.741*
Employment status:
1
Self-employment/ family business -0.059 0.114 -0.519
1
Unemployed 0.228 0.147 1.547*
1
Out of labor force -0.024 0.104 -0.233
Wealth index 0.040 0.046 0.876
Sample size 873
1
Base category is wage worker
***Significance level 1%, **Significance level 5%, *Significance level 10%

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Chapter 5 Summary of main findings
The following are the main findings of the report.

- Men are more likely to participate in the labor force in Risaralda than women. Middle
aged people participate more frequent than the younger and the older ones. Prolonged
health problems hinder people from participating in the labor market.

- In urban area households with a higher number of adults that are working are better off
than households with few working members. The relationship between wealth and
employment is not clear in the rural areas.

- Using job stereotype vignettes, preferred jobs are correlated to jobs that are easier to
pursue in rural areas. The young and unemployed population prefer jobs such as to be a
doctor, teacher or to work as a government employee, whereas the middle age med who
are self-employed prefer to work as farmers, carpenters or taxi drivers.

- For wage workers, there are big differences in the distribution of benefits between the
workers with a long-term contract and those without such contract. Benefits such as
health insurance, pension after retirement, transportation allowances and learning
opportunities are available for most of the wage workers with long term contracts but for
limited number of contract workers. This indicates the strong linkages between job
stability and benefits.

- Assessments of various dimensions of job satisfaction covering level of income; job‟s

potential for future development; and social status shows that meaningfulness of a job
people conduct determines the level of their satisfaction. Middle aged people are more
satisfied with their work than younger and older, and the wealthier ones are more satisfied
than the less wealthy ones

- Jobs in Risaralda are mainly manual labor dominated by routine work and with a high
level of autonomy. However, to get a „good job‟ in the sense of a higher degree of
meaningfulness, a shift from manual towards more cognitive work is desired, as well as a
shift from routine work towards more creative tasks.

- Wage-workers have a significant higher level of trust towards people than both self-
employed and people out of labor force. Hence, having a wage employment increases the
level of social trust and hence contributes to social cohesion. The unemployed have
higher confidence in institutions.

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